Category Archives: Observations

C. Everett Koop, a man who helped me turn from atheism to Christianity, died yesterday.

About child rearing he said:

“If you want to say how can we step into childhood and make it better for them, I would start at the activity level. I’d like to say, ‘Let your kids go out and play.’ Then I’d say, ‘You’re not going to do that are you?’ Make your kids go out and play. Kids ought to grow up the way you and I grew up and we grew up fifty years apart or maybe more. But we did the same things. Now who’s out playing in the afternoon? Nobody. Risks I think are the thing that make life important and everything that you and I do is risk vs. benefit. Is there a risk to sending your kid out? Absolutely. Is there a benefit? It exceeds the risk.”

Later, his son David died while playing. He fell from a mountain while climbing, along with a big chunk of rock. He was only 20 years old. Dr. Koop, a children’s surgeon, said of the accident:

“I might be better able to help parents of dying children, but for quite a while I felt less able, too emotionally involved. And from that time on, I could rarely discuss the death of a child without tears welling up into my eyes.”

I know exactly what he means.

Years later, Dr. Koop and his wife wrote a book (Sometimes Mountains Move) about David’s accident. In it they say, “It was ten weeks after David died when his Bible came into our hands. His book mark was in Jude. We opened his Bible and read the last thing that he had read: ‘And now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling…’ ” God was (and is) more than able to keep us from falling, but sometimes he chooses not to do so. We tumble from mountains, we toddle into swimming pools.

Dr. Koop’s words comfort me, and I am learning alongside him about how God’s grace is sufficient for our troubles, even when we cannot know why He allows some things to happen. Especially when…

It pleases me to think about my son, Weeble, being able to meet one more great Christian, and to talk about things I can only imagine. Dr. Koop, in my wandering mind, points to Jesus and excitedly exclaims, “That’s who held my hand as I operated on thousands of children.” Weeble answers, “That’s who pulled me out of that swimming pool and healed me of maladies I didn’t even know I suffered.” Then both, in perfect peace, worship their Creator.

Weeble, today is your cousin’s 18th birthday. He re-posted a picture he took of you shortly before you died, and he commented that your are a great kid. You really are, too. You were so full of adventure when you were with us, as I’m sure you still are today. Your older brothers and I sometimes talk together and picture you rolling down some heavenly mountain on your scooter, free from risk and harm.

I talked to the monument man today. At long last your headstone will be ready next week. I am anxious to see it, and I am also dreading the day. We asked to be present for it’s arrival at your grave.

How I wish the last thing I can buy for you was anything else.

We thank God every day for your life, and we ask Him to greet you for us. I am so grateful that through His blood, we can all be together again someday.

Your baby brother Simon reminds me of you. I’m sorry that he will never have met you in this plane. The rest of us have memories, and I’m worried that he might feel like an outsider someday. He may never know the weight of grief that we know, but still its effects on the rest of us will also take a toll on him.

Last night I had a dream. I wondered how long it would take to dream of Weeble, but today, upon further reflection, I realized that I have dreamt very little (if at all) of any of my children. One might expect that Weeb, the short life and tragic death of whom having been so predominately at the forefront my mind every day for over five months, would be in my dreams much more often.

I am reticent to give any credence to mysticism in any form. Never-the-less, I do not want to disbelieve that Weeble visited me either. He lives, I live, and we share a human spirit as well as the love and familiarity that can only be shared by a father and his son. There is no reason to disbelieve that it is possible. The real question is whether or not God would permit such an encounter. The witch of Endor comes to mind.

In this dream Weeble was mostly as he was on the day before he died: 2.75 years old, blond,vivacious. I knew, though, that he had died. He was changed, though, in some ways. He could do some things that no two-year-old can do: things like landing on his feet when flipped in the air by the arms, a feat that Jennifer, the children, and I witnessed. He seemed not to want to show this ability off, so I stopped tossing him any harder than I would a “normal boy.”

I played with Weeb for a while, but while playing I knew that he would have to go soon. I wondered as I sat him on the couch if he would just disappear from there. I left him sitting there and rounded the corner. Once out of his sight, I called him by name and he came running to me. I asked him if he would come back to me whenever I called him, and the unspoken answer seemed to be, “No.” I do not know if the answer came from him or from something/someone/somewhere else.
I do not know how he left after that point. Suddenly traveling at a great rate downhill from the meeting place, I asked no one in particular why I am supposed to believe that God loves me. The answer, again from an unknown source and delivered through an unknown medium, came to me: “You know God loves you because he told you that He loves you.”

The whole family is sick with some sort of barfing, diarrhea-ing nastiness; All except Weeble that is. Is it odd that I feel a little sadness not being able to share even a sickness with him? If he were here, I’d feel sad if he WERE sick, but I’d prefer it to his absence.